Auction-style games and games of chance may be defined as a game where the player pays for the opportunity to win a prize, and whether or not the player wins the prize is determined solely by chance, with no skill involved on the part of the player. Such games are of course very popular and widely practiced or played.
Those games must have a sufficient appeal to entice customers to purchase and play the game in numbers great enough to generate significant revenues. Therefore, new games are continually being introduced in the hope that they will be popular, while older or less popular games are retired or revamped. In addition, players know that even with tickets that provide multiple chances to win, the majority of the time they are not going to win anything, which discourages the casual player.
It would be desirable to describe a new type of modified game of chance where the pure random choice function is replaced by an algorithmic combination of collective user data and traditional random choice coupled with an additional payback function. Such novel elements would likely provide a more interesting game and enhance and support player interest and excitement and tend to increase players' chance of winning.
Numerous gaming activities are known and have been implemented in a variety of different forms. By way of example, one broad category of gaming activity is commonly referred to as pari-mutuel gaming. In this form, it is typical for the entry fees provided by players in relation to a gaming activity to be combined into a pool, the operator's commissions, fees and charges deducted from the pool, and for the residual amount to define a prize pool for distribution among the winners of the gaming activity, according to predetermined criteria. Lotteries and the like fall into this category.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,438,640 B2 (and patents referenced therein) describes such gaming that is modified by introducing a wide variety of risk profiles wherein each risk profile defines a proportion of an entry fee that is refundable on the basis of predetermined refund criteria and a complementary proportion of the entry fee that is placed at risk.